Celeb VS Non Celeb Marketing

Is Celebrity Endorsement Always the Best Method for Promoting a Brand?

Companies in many cases, prefer not to use a celebrity, but instead go ahead with a spokesperson which has been tailor made for the product by the company. The following are the advantage of such a strategy

• Control: Companies control the created spokesperson as it has been built in conformity with the brand and target audience, and hence can be ensured with a consistent image. 

• Single utilization of created endorsers: Such spokespersons are exclusive for a brand and hence avoiding any brand conflict.

• Focus more on brand and its features: In Non-Celebrity advertisements the main focus is on the brand and its characteristics while in celebrity the focus sometimes shifts entirely to the celebrity’s features .

 CELEBRITIES - TO USE OR NOT TO USE

SITUATION 1

Cadbury has always come up with sweet, emotional, clutter breaking commercials. Who can forget the lady dancing on the cricket pitch to celebrate her boyfriend's century. But when the company was hit with the worm controversy it had to rope in the national icon Amitabh Bachchan. He embodied the values of Cadbury as a brand and connected with all of India - mothers, teenagers, children, media persons and trader partners. This reinstated customer faith in Cadbury and sales have now touched pre-worm crisis days.

SITUATION 2: 

Asian Paints will always be remembered for its 'Mera wallah cream' campaign and more recently the 'Wah Sunil babu' campaign. There have been very forgettable celebrity endorsements from Akshaye Khanna and Saif Ali Khan in the past (probably people were not able to visualize stars painting their own walls). This is a case of a company whose non-celebrity commercials have done way better than their celebrity campaigns in terms of recall and message delivery.